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Samsung, Toshiba, Others Accused of LCD Price-Fixing
GovTechGuy writes "Toshiba, Samsung, Sharp, LG and other major technology companies allegedly colluded to fix the prices of LCD screens used in televisions and computers, according to an antitrust suit filed Friday by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The complaint alleges that top-level executives at those firms attended secret meetings on a monthly or quarterly basis where they agreed upon minimum prices, price targets, increases and rates to be charged to specific computer manufacturers. The suit also accuses the companies of exchanging product information, agreeing to output levels and keeping prices artificially high by avoiding competition. Cuomo is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and punitive charges for the alleged overcharging of state institutions."
We will see what comes out in court, although I'm holding back judgement until I see the evidence. If they are doing what the complaint alleges, then yes, fine them enough to discourage them (and others) in the future, ie: heavily. Personally I'm glad to see a bit of consumer protection going on for a change. The FTC has become pretty much useless over the last few decades.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
In areas where prices are dropping rapidly its interesting that they are able to find price fixing. It used to be memory now I guess it's moved on to screens.
Whose ass do you have to sue to get some highres monitors around here?
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
This is great. Hopefully in the near future we can address price fixing in everything else, like text-messages, internet service, cell phone service .... etc etc etc.
What happened to trust busting?
>>>Punish price-fixing by price-fixing, at least for a period.
(1) That's unconstitutional. The New York Constitution does not grant such a power as "price fixing".
(2) There's no need for such extremes. When the record companies were caught price-fixing CDs (thereby forming an illegal cartel), they were ordered by the courts to refund ~$25 to all their customers, so that erased any illicit profits they had earned.
(3) And then the free market was left to its own devices, and the cost of CDs plummeted from $13 to $9 within a year, since the cartel was no longer allowed to operate. The same will happen to LCDs too, after the price-fixing cartel is broken-up.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I'm posting this from a 1920x1200 24" monitor that I bought three years ago for about $200.00. Almost nobody makes an affordable display with more than 1080 rows any more. You can blame HDTV for it, monitor manufacturers would much rather sell computer users the HDTV screens they are already making than create computer-specific resolutions. Before HDTV, monitors were on a steady march to higher resolution, after 1080p became popular, monitors backtracked and have been stuck ever since.
Whose ass do you have to sue to get some highres monitors around here?
Forget it.
The only way that's going to happen is if the pixel count gets magically quadrupled, so you can immediately jump from 1900x1200 on a 24" monitor to 3800x2400.
Any intermediate solutions simply wouldn't work due to issues with scaling existing content. Read: it would look like blurred shit. If you don't want to scale things up in size and keep everything 1:1, then tough luck, because it would require perfect vision and strain the eyes, which would make it inaccessible for the vast majority of people out there (and even then, there are limits). I have a 22" running the bog-standard 1680x1050, and to be honest, sometimes I wouldn't mind having a 24" with the same resolution for extra comfort, after a long day of work...
Scale up: looks like shit
Don't scale up: include a magnifying glass with the monitor
Now, if the pixel count gets quadrupled, then you can keep everything displayed completely the same as now, have the OS lie about resolution and scale everything internally, but also add some new API functions to allow apps to draw certain things (such as font glyphs) at the true native resolution. About seven to ten years later (!), you could consider the transitions successful because all monitors sold would be high-res, all maintained software would have been written to make use of the new API, and all toolbar icons would have been quadrupled in resolution as well.
Unfortunately, you'd still have the issue of graphics on the web, so you'd also need a new image format that would hold a low res and a high res version, and if you said something was "300px" wide, it would technically be a lie, but never mind that.
In conclusion, it's not going to happen, and you can forget it :)
If only OPEC could be held to the standards of everyone else...
Bye!
>>>(2) There's no need for such extremes. When the record companies were caught price-fixing CDs (thereby forming an illegal cartel), they were ordered by the courts to refund ~$25 to all their customers, so that erased any illicit profits they had earned.
If you really believe they came anywhere NEAR paying out what they gained by even just the five years of price fixing that they got caught for, you're delusional. The industry shipped over one billion units in the year 2000. Their settlement of 64 million cash to consumers and 75 million in CD's (at a likely actual cost of a few percent of the 75 million) distributed to non-profit organizations was nowhere near the billions they profited.
And just because when they came up with a lower price fix eventually thereafter is hardly evidence of the 'free market left to it's own devices' adjusting correctly. You'd have to be a total tool to believe these things.
The bottom line is that at least two of these companies (Samsung and Toshiba) were directly involved and found guilty of memory price fixing at least once in recent times by multiple courts, and neither the governmental remedies nor the supposed hand of the free market impacted them enough to stop them from doing it again with LCDs. Nothing will stop them and millions of other companies from continuing to screw the consumer in the future. Your premise fails in both theory and application.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
For what it's worth, yes, they gave out checks. I got one as well. But then I was young, single, and working on my CD collection. I literally spent thousands of dollars in those years on music CDs. I know of many others who spent as much or more, and did not find out about the settlement until it was too late to file. By your own admission, they overcharged 10$ per CD. The RIAA's own figures say they shipped 1 Billion units in the last year covered by the suit, 1999-2000. And the cash settlement was 64 million. So that's 64 million out of ten billion. You make my argument for me.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF